Ike Turner & His Kings of Rhythm - Rhythm Rockin' Blues / Ike's Instrumentals

File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Source: LL (from CD)
Released: 1995
Styles: R&B
Time: 60:14
Size: 138,6 MB
Covers: Full

(2:50) 1. Jackie Brenston - Rocket 88
(2:39) 2. Lover Boy - The Way You Used to Treat Me
(3:10) 3. Dennis Binder - I Miss You So
(2:37) 4. Dennis Binder - Nobody Wants Me
(2:31) 5. Ike Turner - Loosely (AKA the Wild One)
(8:43) 6. Ike Turner - All the Blues, All the Time (Medley): Feeling Good/ Love My Baby/ ...
(2:43) 7. J.W. Walker - Sitting and Wondering
(2:29) 8. Dennis Binder - Early Times
(2:52) 9. Johnny Wright - The World Is Yours
(2:45) 10. Johnny Wright - Suffocate
(2:29) 11. Little Johnny Burton - Walkin' About Me
(2:37) 12. Little Johnny Burton - Walk My Way Home
(2:29) 13. Lonnie The Cat - I Ain't Drunk
(2:06) 14. Lonnie The Cat - The Road I Travel
(2:13) 15. Billy Gayle - Night Howler
(2:34) 16. Billy Gayle - My Heart in Your Hands
(2:15) 17. Billy Gayles - A Woman Just Won't Do
(2:25) 18. Billy Gayled - I'm Tired of Being Dogged Around
(2:45) 19. Dennis Binder - You Got Me Way Down Here
(2:19) 20. Lover Boy - Love Is Scarce
(2:32) 21. Lover Boy - Nobody Seems to Want Me

This is the definitive early Ike Turner collection, at least until someone comes out with a box that assembles everything. The 21 tracks here are mostly drawn from Turner's early-'50s sessions with the Kings of Rhythm at the Clarksdale studio, done under the auspices of the Bihari Brothers' Modern, RPM, and Flair labels. Apart from a few well-known numbers like the classic "Rocket 88," much of the material here isn't in other collections, nor has it been assembled in one place before -- some of it has shown up on vinyl, but never together on CD. It consists of Turner working with the Kings of Rhythm, evolving his guitar and piano technique and pumping up the volume and beat on R&B, pushing it toward rock & roll. The highlight for completists is the medley "All the Blues, All the Time," on which Turner, newly confident on the guitar, goes through an extended instrumental medley of B.B. King, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker material. Also included is some hard R&B-cum-rock & roll by the Kings of Rhythm fronted by J. W. Walker, Little Johnny Burton, Dennis Binder, Lonnie "The Cat," and Billy Gayles. The interesting thing is that "Rocket 88," for all of its renown, is just one of the good tracks here -- "Early Times" by Dennis Binder could just as easily have caught the public's fancy with its beat. The sound is somewhat compressed on some of the early material (and, especially, the Johnny Wright/Ike Turner orchestra numbers, although Turner's guitar is real sharp on "The World Is Yours"), but generally it is equal or superior to any other digital incarnation of the individual tracks, and the notes are extremely thorough. -- Amazon.

Rhythm Rockin' Blues

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File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Source: LL (from CD)
Released: 2000
Styles: R&B
Time: 63:03
Size: 146,3 MB
Covers: Full

(2:29) 1. Ho Ho
(2:44) 2. Prancin'
(2:16) 3. The New Breed, Pt. 1
(2:45) 4. The New Breed, Pt. 2
(2:51) 5. Steel Guitar Rag
(3:19) 6. The Gulley
(2:02) 7. The Groove
(2:18) 8. Twist-A-Roo
(2:17) 9. Katanga
(2:18) 10. Trackdown Twist
(2:16) 11. Potato Mash
(2:24) 12. Doublemint
(2:38) 13. The Rooster
(2:40) 14. Going Home
(3:47) 15. Prancing
(2:39) 16. It's Gonna Work Out Fine
(2:43) 17. Twistin' the Strings
(2:19) 18. Cubano Jump (AKA Hey Miss Tina)
(2:20) 19. Loosely (AKA the Wild One)
(2:42) 20. Cuban Getaway (AKA Bayou Rock)
(2:23) 21. Go to It (AKA Stringin' Along)
(8:42) 22. All the Blues All the Time: Feeling Good/Love My Baby/Please Love Me

Rock and blues guitarists alike owe a gargantuan debt to Ike Turner. His ferocious whammy-bar hammering, choppy chording, and ultra-aggressive string-bending solos were way ahead of their time from the mid-1950s onwards. Yet the man himself has never taken his audacious guitar chops all that seriously. Ike considered himself first and foremost an expert boogie pianist who purchased an electric guitar during the early 1950s out of sheer necessity more than anything else. Encountering some difficulty finding a reliable axeman for his combo, the Kings of Rhythm, Ike strapped on a Stratocaster and cut loose. Ike laid down some of the most daring and exciting blues guitar solos of the 1950s and 1960s. And if you've yet to savour this Clarksdale, Mississippi native in his pre-Tina prime, look no further than Ace's first ever all-instrumental collection from Ike. It's a superb non-stop celebration of Ike Turner the Stratocaster master, featuring sides from the Bihari brothers' Flair and Crown logos, Juggy Murray's Sue imprint, and microscopic Stevens Records of Granite City, Illinois. In March of 1954, between producing a variety of vocal proteges for the Biharis in Clarksdale, Turner waxed a handful of marvellous instrumentals. Included was a curious marathon medley, eventually issued under the title All The Blues All The Time, that found Ike and his crew accurately recreating the grooves of B.B. King, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, Junior Parker, and John Lee Hooker. By the time he briefly surfaced at Stevens in 1959, Ike Turner's credentials as a certified guitar monster were entirely in order - as the blazing Ho Ho and his first version of Prancin' eloquently attest. Though his hitmaking activities with Tina began to relegate Ike's wild guitar antics to the background from 1960 on, he found time to cut an instrumental album for Sue in 1962 showcasing the Kings of Rhythm at their fire-breathing, take-no-prisoners hottest. This splendid disc proves that Ike Turner's long reign as blues guitar royalty is entirely justified - even if he has yet to be fully convinced himself! -- Bill Dahl.
Taken from a variety of sources, this collects 22 of Ike Turner's instrumentals from 1954-1965, none of them vocals, none of them recorded with Tina Turner, and all of them highlighting his guitar work. Turner's really wild and uninhibited for much of this set, especially in his ferocious string-bending and use of the whammy bar. While the tunes themselves are mostly generic R&B with a touch of rock & roll, it's also fair to say that generic instrumental rock rarely sounds this good, mostly because Turner's guitar work is so much more inventive and passionate than the nominal songs to which they're tethered. About half of this consists of the tracks on his 1962 Sue album, Dance With Ike & Tina Turner and Their Kings of Rhythm Band, a good showcase for his crackling axework on a batch of mostly self-imposed wordless workouts. There are also a couple of numbers he cut in the late '50s under the pseudonym Icky Renrut; a 1965 single with brass that has a more soul-oriented arrangement than anything else here, albeit soul of a gutbucket kind; and a smattering of items dating back to his mid-'50s R&B days with Flair. There's also an odd nine-minute medley of instrumental blues covers, "All the Blues All the Time," which wound up on a 1963 Crown LP, Rocks the Blues. -- Allmusic.

Ike's Instrumentals

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